Bean-Counting

An accountant, goes an old joke, is someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

The G100, to which John D. Rossi III, assistant professor of accounting, has just been named, would like to change that image. This body of 100 CPAs, selected from the different specialties of members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, suggests priorities and issues of concern to the association and the accounting profession as a whole.

If you think of accounting as a pick-up-the-pieces procedure that takes place long after an event has cooled off, Rossi’s latest article may change your mind. Published in the Winter 2002 issue of the Pennsylvania CPA Journal, it’s called “Accounting for the Impact of Terrorism.” Rossi says: “It examines the extreme complexity in separating the direct financial and economic effects of the September 11 terrorist attack from the prevailing economic conditions before the event.”

Rossi, who directs the Personal Financial Planning Certificate Program at Moravian, also was an advisor to Karen Hansen Weese, assistant managing editor of Investment Advisor magazine, whose cover story in July was on the lack of minorities in the field of personal financial planning. It was called “Why So White? For a Profession that Preaches Diversification, Financial Planning Is Awfully Monochromatic.” Rossi was quoted several times as the director of a Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards-registered program.